PLAISTERED and whited sepulchres were anciently affected in cadaverous
and corrupted burials; and the rigid Jews were wont to garnish the
sepulchres of the righteous.[AQ] Ulysses, in Hecuba, cared not how
meanly he lived, so he might find a noble tomb after death.[AR]
Great princes affected great monuments; and the fair and larger urns
contained no vulgar ashes, which makes that disparity in those which
time discovereth among us. The present urns were not of one capacity,
the largest containing above a gallon, some not much above half that
measure; nor all of one figure, wherein there is no strict conformity
in the same or different countries; observable from those represented
by Casalius, Bosio, and others, though all found in Italy; while many
have handles, ears, and long necks, but most imitate a circular figure,
in a spherical and round composure; whether from any mystery, best
duration or capacity, were but a conjecture. But the common form with
necks was a proper figure, making our last bed like our first; nor
much unlike the urns of our nativity while we lay in the nether part
of the earth,[AS] and inward vault of our microcosm. Many urns are
red, these but of a black colour somewhat smooth, and dully sounding,
which begat some doubt, whether they were burnt, or only baked in
oven or sun, according to the ancient way, in many bricks, tiles,
pots, and testaceous works; and, as the word _testa_ is properly to
be taken, when occurring without addition and chiefly intended by
Pliny, when he commendeth bricks and tiles of two years old, and to
make them in the spring. Nor only these concealed pieces, but the open
magnificence of antiquity, ran much in the artifice of clay. Hereof the
house of Mausolus was built, thus old Jupiter stood in the Capitol,
and the statua of Hercules, made in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus,
was extant in Pliny’s days. And such as declined burning or funeral
urns, affected coffins of clay, according to the mode of Pythagoras, a
way preferred by Varro. But the spirit of great ones was above these
circumscriptions, affecting copper, silver, gold, and porphyry urns,
wherein Severus lay, after a serious view and sentence on that which
should contain him.[AT] Some of these urns were thought to have been
silvered over, from sparklings in several pots, with small tinsel
parcels; uncertain whether from the earth, or the first mixture in them.
[AQ] St Matt. xxiii.
[AR] _Euripides._
[AS] Psal. lxiii.
[AT] “Χωρήσεις τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ὂν ἡ οἰκουμένη οὐκ ἐχώρησεν.”--_Dion._
Among these urns we could obtain no good account of their coverings;
only one seemed arched over with some kind of brickwork. Of those found
at Buxton, some were covered with flints, some, in other parts, with
tiles; those at Yarmouth Caster were closed with Roman bricks, and
some have proper earthen covers adapted and fitted to them. But in the
Homerical urn of Patroclus, whatever was the solid tegument, we find
the immediate covering to be a purple piece of silk: and such as had
no covers might have the earth closely pressed into them, after which
disposure were probably some of these, wherein we found the bones and
ashes half mortared unto the sand and sides of the urn, and some long
roots of quich, or dog’s-grass, wreathed about the bones.
No Lamps, included liquors, lacrymatories, or tear bottles, attended
these rural urns, either as sacred unto the _manes_, or passionate
expressions of their surviving friends. While with rich flames, and
hired tears, they solemnized their obsequies, and in the most lamented
monuments made one part of their inscriptions.[AU] Some find sepulchral
vessels containing liquors, which time hath incrassated into jellies.
For, besides these lacrymatories, notable lamps, with vessels of
oils, and aromatical liquors, attended noble ossuaries; and some yet
retaining a vinosity and spirit in them, which, if any have tasted,
they have far exceeded the palates of antiquity. Liquors not to be
computed by years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and
the fatal periods of kingdoms.[AV] The draughts of consulary date were
but crude unto these, and Opimian wine but in the must unto them.[AW]
[AU] “Cum lacrymis posuere.”
[AV] About five hundred years.
[AW] “Vinum Opiminianum annorum centum.”--_Petron._
In sundry graves and sepulchres we meet with rings, coins, and
chalices. Ancient frugality was so severe, that they allowed no gold
to attend the corpse, but only that which served to fasten their
teeth. Whether the Opaline stone in this were burnt upon the finger of
the dead, or cast into the fire by some affectionate friend, it will
consist with either custom. But other incinerable substances were found
so fresh, that they could feel no singe from fire. These, upon view,
were judged to be wood; but, sinking in water, and tried by the fire,
we found them to be bone or ivory. In their hardness and yellow colour
they most resembled box, which, in old expressions, found the epithet
of eternal, and perhaps in such conservatories might have passed
uncorrupted.
That bay leaves were found green in the tomb of S. Humbert, after an
hundred and fifty years, was looked upon as miraculous. Remarkable it
was unto old spectators, that the cypress of the temple of Diana lasted
so many hundred years. The wood of the ark, and olive-rod of Aaron,
were older at the captivity; but the cypress of the ark of Noah was
the greatest vegetable of antiquity, if Josephus were not deceived by
some fragments of it in his days: to omit the moor logs and fir trees
found underground in many parts of England; the undated ruins of winds,
floods, or earthquakes, and which in Flanders still show from what
quarter they fell, as generally lying in a north-east position.
But though we found not these pieces to be wood, according to first
apprehensions, yet we missed not altogether of some woody substance;
for the bones were not so clearly picked but some coals were found
amongst them; a way to make wood perpetual, and a fit associate for
metal, whereon was laid the foundation of the great Ephesian temple,
and which were made the lasting tests of old boundaries and landmarks.
Whilst we look on these, we admire not observations of coals found
fresh after four hundred years. In a long-deserted habitation even
egg-shells have been found fresh, not tending to corruption.
In the monument of King Childerick the iron relicks were found all
rusty and crumbling into pieces; but our little iron pins, which
fastened the ivory works, held well together, and lost not their
magnetical quality, though wanting a tenacious moisture for the firmer
union of parts; although it be hardly drawn into fusion, yet that metal
soon submitteth unto rust and dissolution. In the brazen pieces we
admired not the duration, but the freedom from rust, and ill savour,
upon the hardest attrition; but now exposed unto the piercing atoms
of air, in the space of a few months, they begin to spot and betray
their green entrails. We conceive not these urns to have descended
thus naked as they appear, or to have entered their graves without the
old habit of flowers. The urn of Philopœmen was so laden with flowers
and ribbons, that it afforded no sight of itself. The rigid Lycurgus
allowed olive and myrtle. The Athenians might fairly except against
the practice of Democritus, to be buried up in honey, as fearing to
embezzle a great commodity of their country, and the best of that kind
in Europe. But Plato seemed too frugally politick, who allowed no
larger monument than would contain four heroick verses, and designed
the most barren ground for sepulture: though we cannot commend the
goodness of that sepulchral ground which was set at no higher rate than
the mean salary of Judas. Though the earth had confounded the ashes
of these ossuaries, yet the bones were so smartly burnt, that some
thin plates of brass were found half melted among them. Whereby we
apprehend they were not of the meanest caresses, perfunctorily fired,
as sometimes in military, and commonly in pestilence, burnings; or
after the manner of abject corpses, huddled forth and carelessly burnt,
without the Esquiline Port at Rome; which was an affront continued upon
Tiberius, while they but half burnt his body, and in the amphitheatre,
according to the custom in notable malefactors;[AX] whereas Nero seemed
not so much to fear his death as that his head should be cut off and
his body not burnt entire.
[AX] “In amphitheatro semiustulandum.”--_Suetonius Vit. Tib._
Some, finding many fragments of skulls in these urns, suspected
a mixture of bones; in none we searched was there cause of such
conjecture, though sometimes they declined not that practice.--The
ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia; of Achilles with
those of Patroclus. All urns contained not single ashes; without
confused burnings they affectionately compounded their bones;
passionately endeavouring to continue their living unions. And when
distance of death denied such conjunctions, unsatisfied affections
conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the grave, to lie urn
by urn, and touch but in their manes. And many were so curious to
continue their living relations, that they contrived large and family
urns, wherein the ashes of their nearest friends and kindred might
successively be received, at least some parcels thereof, while their
collateral memorials lay in minor vessels about them.
Antiquity held too light thoughts from objects of mortality, while
some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies,[AY] and jugglers
showed tricks with skeletons. When fiddlers made not so pleasant mirth
as fencers, and men could sit with quiet stomachs, while hanging
was played before them.[AZ] Old considerations made few mementos
by skulls and bones upon their monuments. In the Egyptian obelisks
and hieroglyphical figures it is not easy to meet with bones. The
sepulchral lamps speak nothing less than sepulture, and in their
literal draughts prove often obscene and antick pieces. Where we
find _D. M._[BA] it is obvious to meet with sacrificing _pateras_
and vessels of libation upon old sepulchral monuments. In the Jewish
hypogæum and subterranean cell at Rome, was little observable beside
the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of Anthony and Jerome we
meet with thigh-bones and death’s-heads; but the cemeterial cells of
ancient Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture
stories; not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive,
and the mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but iterately
affecting the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of
Ezekiel, as hopeful draughts, and hinting imagery of the resurrection,
which is the life of the grave, and sweetens our habitations in the
land of moles and pismires.
[AY] “Sic erimus cuncti, ... ergo dum vivimus vivamus.”
[AZ] Αγώνον παίζειν. A barbarous pastime at feasts, when men stood
upon a rolling globe, with their necks in a rope and a knife in their
hands, ready to cut it when the stone was rolled away, wherein, if they
failed, they lost their lives, to the laughter of their spectators.
[BA] Diis manibus.
Gentle inscriptions precisely delivered the extent of men’s lives,
seldom the manner of their deaths, which history itself so often leaves
obscure in the records of memorable persons. There is scarce any
philosopher but dies twice or thrice in Laertius; nor almost any life
without two or three deaths in Plutarch; which makes the tragical ends
of noble persons more favourably resented by compassionate readers who
find some relief in the election of such differences.
The certainty of death is attended with uncertainties, in time, manner,
places. The variety of monuments hath often obscured true graves; and
cenotaphs confounded sepulchres. For beside their real tombs, many have
found honorary and empty sepulchres. The variety of Homer’s monuments
made him of various countries. Euripides had his tomb in Africa, but
his sepulture in Macedonia. And Severus found his real sepulchre in
Rome, but his empty grave in Gallia.
He that lay in a golden urn eminently above the earth, was not like
to find the quiet of his bones. Many of these urns were broke by a
vulgar discoverer in hope of enclosed treasure. The ashes of Marcellus
were lost above ground, upon the like account. Where profit hath
prompted, no age hath wanted such miners. For which the most barbarous
expilators found the most civil rhetorick. Gold once out of the earth
is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground,
is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not
riches, adorn men’s ashes. The commerce of the living is not to be
transferred unto the dead; it is not injustice to take that which none
complains to lose, and no man is wronged where no man is possessor.
What virtue yet sleeps in this _terra damnata_ and aged cinders, were
petty magic to experiment. These crumbling relicks and long fired
particles superannuate such expectations; bones, hairs, nails, and
teeth of the dead, were the treasures of old sorcerers. In vain we
revive such practices; present superstition too visibly perpetuates the
folly of our forefathers, wherein unto old observation this island was
so complete, that it might have instructed Persia.
Plato’s historian of the other world lies twelve days incorrupted,
while his soul was viewing the large stations of the dead. How to
keep the corpse seven days from corruption by anointing and washing,
without extenteration, were an hazardable piece of art, in our choicest
practice. How they made distinct separation of bones and ashes from
fiery admixture, hath found no historical solution; though they seemed
to make a distinct collection and overlooked not Pyrrhus his toe. Some
provision they might make by fictile vessels, coverings, tiles, or flat
stones, upon and about the body (and in the same field, not far from
these urns, many stones were found underground), as also by careful
separation of extraneous matter composing and raking up the burnt bones
with forks, observable in that notable lamp of Galvanus Martianus,
who had the sight of the _vas ustrinum_ or vessel wherein they burnt
the dead, found in the Esquiline field at Rome, might have afforded
clearer solution. But their insatisfaction herein begat that remarkable
invention in the funeral pyres of some princes, by incombustible sheets
made with a texture of asbestos, incremable flax, or salamander’s wool,
which preserved their bones and ashes incommixed.
How the bulk of a man should sink into so few pounds of bones and
ashes, may seem strange unto any who considers not its constitution,
and how slender a mass will remain upon an open and urging fire of the
carnal composition. Even bones themselves, reduced into ashes, do abate
a notable proportion. And consisting much of a volatile salt, when that
is fired out, make a light kind of cinders. Although their bulk be
disproportionable to their weight, when the heavy principle of salt is
fired out, and the earth almost only remaineth; observable in sallow,
which makes more ashes than oak, and discovers the common fraud of
selling ashes by measure, and not by ponderation.
Some bones make best skeletons, some bodies quick and speediest ashes.
Who would expect a quick flame from hydropical Heraclitus? The poisoned
soldier when his belly brake, put out two pyres in Plutarch. But in the
plague of Athens, one private pyre served two or three intruders; and
the Saracens burnt in large heaps, by the king of Castile, showed how
little fuel sufficeth. Though the funeral pyre of Patroclus took up
an hundred foot,[BB] a piece of an old boat burnt Pompey; and if the
burthen of Isaac were sufficient for an holocaust, a man may carry his
own pyre.
[BB] “Ἑκατόμπεδον ἔνθα ἢ ἔνθα.”
From animals are drawn good burning lights, and good medicines against
burning. Though the seminal humour seems of a contrary nature to fire,
yet the body completed proves a combustible lump, wherein fire finds
flame even from bones, and some fuel almost from all parts; though the
metropolis of humidity[BC] seems least disposed unto it, which might
render the skulls of these urns less burned than other bones. But
all flies or sinks before fire almost in all bodies: when the common
ligament is dissolved, the attenuable parts ascend, the rest subside in
coal, calx, or ashes.
[BC] The Brain. _Hippocrates_.
To burn the bones of the king of Edom for lime,[BD] seems no irrational
ferity; but to drink of the ashes of dead relations,[BE] a passionate
prodigality. He that hath the ashes of his friend, hath an everlasting
treasure; where fire taketh leave, corruption slowly enters. In
bones well burnt, fire makes a wall against itself; experimented in
Copels,[105] and tests of metals, which consist of such ingredients.
What the sun compoundeth, fire analyzeth, not transmuteth. That
devouring agent leaves almost always a morsel for the earth, whereof
all things are but a colony; and which, if time permits, the mother
element will have in their primitive mass again.
[BD] Amos ii. 1.
[BE] As Artemisia of her husband Mausolus.
He that looks for urns and old sepulchral relicks, must not seek them
in the ruins of temples, where no religion anciently placed them. These
were found in a field, according to ancient custom, in noble or private
burial; the old practice of the Canaanites, the family of Abraham, and
the burying-place of Joshua, in the borders of his possessions; and
also agreeable unto Roman practice to bury by highways, whereby their
monuments were under eye:--memorials of themselves, and mementoes of
mortality unto living passengers; whom the epitaphs of great ones were
fain to beg to stay and look upon them,--a language though sometimes
used, not so proper in church inscriptions.[BF] The sensible rhetorick
of the dead, to exemplarity of good life, first admitted to the bones
of pious men and martyrs within church walls, which in succeeding ages
crept into promiscuous practice: while Constantine was peculiarly
favoured to be admitted into the church porch, and the first thus
buried in England, was in the days of Cuthred.
[BF] Siste, viator.
Christians dispute how their bodies should lie in the grave. In urnal
interment they clearly escaped this controversy. Though we decline the
religious consideration, yet in cemeterial and narrower burying-places,
to avoid confusion and cross-position, a certain posture were to be
admitted: which even Pagan civility observed. The Persians lay north
and south; the Megarians and Phœnicians placed their heads to the east;
the Athenians, some think, towards the west, which Christians still
retain. And Beda will have it to be the posture of our Saviour. That
he was crucified with his face toward the west, we will not contend
with tradition and probable account; but we applaud not the hand of
the painter, in exalting his cross so high above those on either side:
since hereof we find no authentic account in history, and even the
crosses found by Helena, pretend no such distinction from longitude or
dimension.
To be knav’d out of our graves, to have our skulls made drinking-bowls,
and our bones turned into pipes, to delight and sport our enemies, are
tragical abominations escaped in burning burials.
Urnal interments and burnt relicks lie not in fear of worms, or to
be an heritage for serpents. In carnal sepulture, corruptions seem
peculiar unto parts; and some speak of snakes out of the spinal marrow.
But while we suppose common worms in graves, ’tis not easy to find
any there; few in churchyards above a foot deep, fewer or none in
churches though in fresh-decayed bodies. Teeth, bones, and hair, give
the most lasting defiance to corruption. In an hydropical body, ten
years buried in the churchyard, we met with a fat concretion, where
the nitre of the earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body,
had coagulated large lumps of fat into the consistence of the hardest
Castile soap, whereof part remaineth with us.[106] After a battle
with the Persians, the Roman corpses decayed in few days, while the
Persian bodies remained dry and uncorrupted. Bodies in the same ground
do not uniformly dissolve, nor bones equally moulder; whereof in the
opprobrious disease, we expect no long duration. The body of the
Marquis of Dorset[BG] seemed sound and handsomely cereclothed, that
after seventy-eight years was found uncorrupted. Common tombs preserve
not beyond powder: a firmer consistence and compage of parts might
be expected from arefaction, deep burial, or charcoal. The greatest
antiquities of mortal bodies may remain in putrefied bones, whereof,
though we take not in the pillar of Lot’s wife, or metamorphosis of
Ortelius, some may be older than pyramids, in the putrefied relicks
of the general inundation. When Alexander opened the tomb of Cyrus,
the remaining bones discovered his proportion, whereof urnal fragments
afford but a bad conjecture, and have this disadvantage of grave
interments, that they leave us ignorant of most personal discoveries.
For since bones afford not only rectitude and stability but figure
unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy
appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might
hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread _cariola_ shows a
well-shaped horse behind; handsome formed skulls give some analogy of
fleshy resemblance. A critical view of bones makes a good distinction
of sexes. Even colour is not beyond conjecture, since it is hard to be
deceived in the distinction of the Negroes’ skulls.[107] Dante’s[BH]
characters are to be found in skulls as well as faces. Hercules is not
only known by his foot. Other parts make out their comproportions and
inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head
measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives conjecture of the
principal faculties: physiognomy outlives ourselves, and ends not in
our graves.
[BG] Who was buried in 1530, and dug up in 1608, and found perfect like
an ordinary corpse newly interred.
[BH] Purgat. xxiii. 31.
Severe contemplators, observing these lasting relicks, may think them
good monuments of persons past, little advantage to future beings;
and, considering that power which subdueth all things unto itself,
that can resume the scattered atoms, or identify out of anything,
conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out of relicks: but
the soul subsisting, other matter, clothed with due accidents, may
salve the individuality. Yet the saints, we observe, arose from graves
and monuments about the holy city. Some think the ancient patriarchs
so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan, as hoping to make a
part of that resurrection; and, though thirty miles from Mount Calvary,
at least to lie in that region which should produce the first-fruits
of the dead. And if, according to learned conjecture, the bodies of
men shall rise where their greatest relicks remain, many are not like
to err in the topography of their resurrection, though their bones
or bodies be after translated by angels into the field of Ezekiel’s
vision, or as some will order it, into the valley of judgment, or
Jehosaphat.